“Does he bite?”

“No; there’s the trouble.  Anybody can pet him.”

Valerie laughed, turned over, and lay at length on her stomach in the grass, exploring the verdure for a four-leaf clover.

“I never yet found one,” she said, cheerfully.  “But then I’ve never before seen much grass except in the Park.”

“Didn’t you ever go to the country?”

“No.  Mother was a widow and bedridden.  We had a tiny income; I have it now.  But it wasn’t enough to take us to the country.”

“Didn’t you work?”

“I couldn’t leave mother.  Besides, she wished to educate me.”

“Didn’t you go to school?”

“Only a few months.  We had father’s books.  We managed to buy a few more—­or borrow them from the library.  And that is how I was educated, Rita—­in a room with a bedridden mother.”

“She must have been well educated.”

“I should think so.  She was a college graduate....  When I was fifteen I took the examinations for Barnard—­knowing, of course, that I couldn’t go—­and passed in everything....  If mother could have spared me I could have had a scholarship.”

“That was hard luck, wasn’t it, dear?”

“N-no.  I had mother—­as long as she lived.  After she died I had what she had given me—­and she had the education of a cultivated woman; she was a lover of the best in literature and in art, a woman gently bred, familiar with sorrow and privation.”

“If you choose,” said Rita, “you are equipped for a governess—­or a lady’s companion—­or a secretary—­”

“I suppose I am.  Before I signed with Schindler I advertised, offering myself as a teacher.  How many replies do you suppose I received?”

“How many?”

“Not one.”

Rita sighed.  “I suppose you couldn’t afford to go on advertising.”

“No, and I couldn’t afford to wait....  Mother’s burial took all the little income.  I was glad enough when Schindler signed me....  But a girl can’t remain long with Schindler.”

“I know.”

Valerie plucked a grass blade and bit it in two reflectively.

“It’s a funny sort of a world, isn’t it, Rita?”

“Very humorous—­if you look at it that way.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not entirely.”

Valerie glanced up at the hammock.

“How did you happen to become a model, Rita?”

“I’m a clergyman’s daughter; what do you expect?” she said, with smiling bitterness.

“You!”

“From Massachusetts, dear....  The blue-light elders got on my nerves.  I wanted to study music, too, with a view to opera.”  She laughed unpleasantly.

“Was your home life unhappy, dear?”

“Does a girl leave happiness?”

“You didn’t run away, did you?”

“I did—­straight to the metropolis as a moth to its candle.”

Valerie waited, then, timidly:  “Did you care to tell me any more, dear?  I thought perhaps you might like me to ask you.  It isn’t curiosity.”